


The War Is Over for You Now

by Praxus Goforth (PraxusGoforth)



Category: The Rat Patrol
Genre: Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 21:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7818532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PraxusGoforth/pseuds/Praxus%20Goforth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hauptmann Dietrich, 1943, Allied POW camp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

PART  4 : Casablanca

The auditorium is cramped and hot, overstuffed with bodies in the grip of summer heat. No one seems to mind. Light seeps through the drawn shades, mingling with the flickering projector light and illuminating the haze of several dozen cigarettes into a dream-like  fog . They’ve got a new film today, a welcome change from the tired old reruns of serials and cartoons.  Casablanca , a new release , just a couple years old . Today they feel  almost like regular men.

The enlisted men sit in the front, a low  buzz constantly going throughout the crowd as the y whisper back and forth, jostling each other and chuckling. A few officers sit at the back, Dietrich among them. He’s got a cigarette in his hand, one of his last three, and he’s enjoying it.

His back sticks to the metal folding chair, damp with sweat. He likes the film, it’s one of the better ones they’ve been allowed to see.  A few of the officers refuse to watch any American movies, claiming they can never meet the standards of the German industry, but they’re wrong. 

Most of the men know enough English now to get by, but Brandt is still up there by the screen, shouting out translations of the dialogue, occasionally wildly mistranslating. Dietrich isn’t quite sure yet if he does it on purpose or not, but it certainly adds to the humor. The men shout back at him when they want him to be quiet or think he’s ruining a particular ly n ice bit of conversation. It’s all  very friendly .

“ Play  La Marseillaise . Play it, ” the flickering figure on the screen says. 

Brandt has stopped transl ating. He stands still and he’s watching now too, and the chuckling and murmuring from the crowd  slows .  Dietrich is glued to the screen. The music builds,  the strains of the French anthem overlapping with  Die Wacht am Rhein , the  songs battling, discordant, the sounds of his own native German cruel and ugly against the rousing French, and the song of France pulls through , gloriously triumphant. 

The men are almost silent . The officers watch with hidden eyes, faces hard. Dietrich has forgotten about his cigarette and feels his throat tightening. He gets up to leave, nearly stumbling through the rows of chairs, searching for the exit . He finds it with the strains of  La Marseillaise ringing in his ears.


	2. Chapter 2

PART  1 : Souvenirs

“Spread ’em,” the GI commands. Dietrich raises his arms. He’s getting used to this—this is the third time he’s been searched in the last four days.  His Luger is long gone, and souvenir-seekers have already gotten to his goggles and binoculars. He wonders what pieces of him they’ll make a try for next; his belt, perhaps, and maybe his buttons.

 The GI pats him down and searches his pockets, confiscating a lighter, although there are no cigarettes to go with it. Satisfied he has neither weapons nor interesting items to show off back home, he sends him further down the processing line. Dietrich makes his way to an upturned crate that is presently serving as a clerical office. The American soldier manning it notes his rank with a quick glance and flashes him a cursory salute before addressing him in broken German.  


“Fill out form, name, rank, capture place. Give to there— ” he points to another crate—“then go there,” with a gesture behind him. 

“I wish to speak to your commanding officer,” Dietrich says in English. The GI looks up, momentarily  surprised , then cups his hand around his mouth and bellows over his shoulder, “Hey, Sarge!” 

Dietrich starts despite himself, for just a moment wondering if it would be Troy walking down the line. But no, he’s never seen this sergeant. The American gives him an up-and-down. “Problem?”

“Your men are confiscating the private identity documents of these prisoners in violation of orders. If it were my men I would want to know about it,” Dietrich says, and he points to the back pocket of a nearby private which is clearly stuffed with  Soldbuch booklets. 

The sergeant pauses, frowning. From the American’s point of view the booklets make fine trophies, but POWs without identity papers can slip through the processing and make trouble. Finally, he nods briskly. “Thank you, Captain.” He snaps a slightly stilted salute and goes to chew out the offending soldier. 

Dietrich takes his forms and moves into a patch of shade to fill them out . They are in both Italian and German, and he writes in his name, rank, and previous command.  When he comes to the line ‘POW WAS CAPTURED BY/SURRENDERED TO:’ he  pauses, an involuntary grin that is both bitter and resigned creeping onto his face, and writes ‘Rat Patrol”.


	3. Chapter 3

PART 6: Oath

The sunsets here are beautiful. Better than back home, although not quite as spectacular as those of the North African desert. Dietrich still pauses to watch them whenever he can. There are a lot of good things here in America, but there are many things he misses.

Thomas the farmer walks up to him and they enjoy the sunset together for a moment. He has two sons fighting overseas now and no one to work the fields, except these   
young German-speaking soldiers. When they met and started working together for a while and he learned Dietrich spoke English, he told him about his brother who died in the Great War. There is no animosity, despite the men of both their countries who have been so long engaged in killing the other. 

“Your boys did a real good job today, son,” Thomas tells him. Dietrich knows when he looks at him he doesn’t see a Nazi, or even a German soldier. He sees his sons. Dietrich nods respectfully, then watches the last of the 20-man work detail piling into the truck. They are not the men he once commanded, but he leads them. His English proficiency has made him de facto commander of these labor groups, and his volunteering for it has made the men loyal to more than his rank. They did do a good job today.

“Don’t know what we’d have done if you boys hadn’t been here…. Y’all have been a real godsend,” Thomas continues. “Shame you fellows are over here under these circumstances.” He shakes his head, the regret too deep for words.

“It would be worse for them if they were home,” Dietrich says. He reads the news reports. These men would be dead in France or Russia if they hadn’t been here, picking cotton. 

Thomas makes a sage harrumphing noise in agreement. The solitary guard, his rifle stored away in the truck all day, climbs into the driver seat. “Moving out, Captain!” he shouts above the growl of the engine. 

Dietrich turns to go, but Thomas stops him. “I got a couple more chores for him here, Coughlin. He can take my truck back.”

The guard pauses, scrutinizing Dietrich. Finally, he nods. “Okay. See ya back at camp.” He touches a finger to temple in casual salute, then drives off. 

“Listen, I know I’m not supposed to give y’all hard currency, but as a token of my appreciation I want you to have this.” Thomas gives him a ten dollar bill. “You’re gonna need it when this war is over. When you go back home.” 

Dietrich takes the bill. “Thank you, Mr. Thomas. I don’t know what that home may be like, but thank you.” He thinks about the house he grew up in, and then remembers the news footage of the bombings. Is it still standing?

Maybe Thomas knows what he’s thinking. The war has cost him too, after all. “Well now, you mind unloading the truck at the storehouse? You can drive it back tomorrow.” 

The trust doesn’t surprise him anymore. Sometimes it’s easy to forget he’s a prisoner in this land. “Of course. Good evening, Mr. Thomas.” But he never forgets completely.

“God bless,” Thomas says and goes back to the farmhouse.

Dietrich walks slowly to the farmer’s truck, which is filled with the equipment of their work. The keys are dangling from the ignition and he sits in the front seat, suddenly tired. He has ten dollars in his pocket, a car at his disposal, and he is wearing civilian clothes. It occurs to him that he could escape. He could simply drive away, as far away as the gas will take him, and buy a train ticket when it stops. Go to New York, find a neutral ship, sneak or lie his way aboard and go—home. 

Then, what? Would he be reassigned, perhaps to the Eastern Front? Back to France? Given a rest in the bombed out ruins of his hometown? Could he serve once again under his great leader? He has made an oath to do so, an oath to fight for his country, to escape from foreign capture, to be always loyal to his nation. A good soldier would do that. A hero of the Fatherland would do that. 

Or would he?

Dietrich starts the car and drives to the storehouse as the sun sinks below the horizon, dimming the flat farmland to twilight. He unloads the equipment quickly, making it ready for the next day. It is dark outside when he drives back to the camp, and the stars are perfectly visible when he checks into the front gate, where the guard is not particularly surprised to see a POW driving himself back to camp. Tomorrow, he will go out with his men to the fields, he will read the news reports of the war, and he will wonder what his country will be like when this war is over.


	4. Chapter 4

PART 7: Theirs or Ours

He hears the sound of gunfire and screaming. Shells explode. Anti-tank, he thinks. Theirs or ours?

Dietrich snaps his eyes open, but he’s not on a battlefield. His tanks are long gone, his men disbanded and defeated. He’s lying on a hospital cot and there is no gunfire here in the camp, just the steady drip of the IV attached to his arm.

“Doctor,” he croaks out, his throat dry.

Someone in a white coat comes over and holds a glass of water to his lips. He drinks it gratefully and collapses back on the pillow.

“How long—” he starts.

“Sixteen hours, give or take. We had to operate. I’d say you’re lucky to be alive but I wouldn’t call any man in your position lucky,” the doctor says casually. Dietrich can’t remember his name, but he recalls this camp physician is friendly. He’s checking over his charts, makes a note on it, then takes his pulse. Dietrich can feel stiff bandages on his abdomen and he feels bruised everywhere.

“Where is Schlusser?” he asks.

“Don’t worry. He’s not going to get a chance to finish what he started. They shipped him out to the fanatic’s camp, once he got stitched up. You coulda faced a court-martial for that, you know.”

Dietrich groans. He doesn’t care about being court-martialed, he realizes, and that alarms him. But he’d do it again anyway.

The doctor puts the chart back at the foot of the bed, shaking his head. “I hope you know what you got yourself into, Captain. These guys are going to give you hell.” He looks at him, concerned. “We could get you a transfer,” he offers.

“No. I’ll stay here. Someone has to look after this place.”

The doctor chuckles darkly. “Typical. We didn’t quite expect it from you, though. Guess you don’t know who’s a hothead until you give him a poke, huh? I hear you gave Schlusser quite a tongue-lashing before he pulled the knife. The guards seemed to have learned a few new German words.”

Dietrich smiles weakly. He remembers some of it. They were arguing about the war.

It turned ugly at some point, and Dietrich hadn’t cared anymore that he was assaulting an Oberstleutnant.

“I gave you some morphine. You’re going to sleep now,” the doctor says.

He’s kept his mouth shut for so long. It was wonderful to say it all. He closes his eyes.

“Gute Nacht, Doktor,” he says.


	5. Chapter 5

PART 5: The Commander

The commander sits in his chair behind the desk. The teletypist is a young, skinny private with the typing machine on his lap. Dietrich salutes the commander and stands at attention.

The commander takes in the German’s appearance with one glance. He’s not happy. A tight grimace on his face, like he knows this isn’t going to be pleasant, he gives the private a nod and begins.

“State your name and serial number, Captain,” he barks.

“Captain Hans Dietrich, 81G-20989.” The private clicks the keys of the machine. Another trickle of blood runs down Dietrich’s chin and he wipes it with the back of his hand.

“This is a preliminary disciplinary hearing, November 28, 1943, for the above stated prisoner.” The teletypist clicks that in too.

“All right, sit down, Captain,” the commander relents. Dietrich takes the empty chair in front of the desk.

The commander observes his notes for a few moments in silence, giving a mildly grumpy grumble now and then. He looks up at the bleeding German and scowls. “In as few words as possible, explain to me what happened in my camp today.”

The captain blinks and draws himself up a little straighter in his chair. “I saw to it to rid your camp of a disruptive prisoner, restore order among the men, and prevent the assault and possible murder of an innocent soldier. Sir.”

The commander glares at him to keep from rolling his eyes. “Start at the beginning, Captain, if you please.”

He does. “Three days ago Schütze Wieland Gottschalk was beaten by Bohn’s squad.”

The commander shuffles through his papers, flustered. “That wasn’t reported.”

“The private in question deemed it prudent to keep the matter to himself. It was not serious enough to require extensive medical treatment. When I found out about it I examined his injuries and agreed with his assessment. More would be lost than gained by reporting the incident.”

The commander grunts. “Why did they target him?”

“He is Austrian. That is enough for many.”

“You know him personally?”

“He was my driver in North Africa. He was with me for almost six months, wounded in Tunisia, and captured before the withdrawal.”

He nods thoughtfully. “Continue.”

“After that, I saw the best method of reducing Bohn’s influence within the ranks would be to remove his access to them. I had him transferred to the graveyard shift in the infirmary—”

“You don’t have authority to reassign prisoners,” the commander interrupts.

Dietrich gives a thin smile. “You can appreciate the finer intricacies of business between guards and prisoners, Colonel.”

He can’t argue there.

“However, his Unteroffizer began taking his commands and implementing them among the men in his absence. Suspicion of the origin of Bohn’s transfer quickly fell upon me.”

The commander grunts. “So what? He’s a sergeant, for God’s sake. What’s he going to do to you?”

He can tell the German doesn’t like this response. “Yesterday he called to session a “court of honor” which convicted me of treasonous acts of anti-Nazism. The punishment is death. Forced suicide seems a popular method, although I believe they were planning a mass beating in my case.”

The commander cracks his knuckles in a spasm of indignation. His wife keeps telling him he’ll get arthritis. “Why didn’t you alert the guards?”

Dietrich gives him a hard look. “I think you know, Colonel.”

The commander considers telling the teletypist to strike that from the record, but he doesn’t. He’s got no right to.

“What were the grounds for this so-called trial?”

“Conspiring with the American authorities, serving as a translator in cooperation with the Americans, speaking critically of the Führer, and refusing to practice the Nazi salute.”

“I see,” says the commander. “In that case, any actions you may or may not have taken were in defense of your life.”

“Am I not permitted to defend my life against unlawful execution?”

“Yes, yes, all that’s guaranteed by the Geneva Convention. What about the explosives?”

“What explosives, Colonel?”

“The explosives Bohn’s SS boys had hidden under their barracks! That’s a whole other pile of reports in the waiting. If we find evidence they were planning sabotage on American soil the PGMO is going to hit this place like you won’t believe. Although maybe you would believe it.” He tries to discern what’s going on behind those steady eyes, but the Captain gives him no clues. “Pretty convenient the thugs’ HQ gets blown to bits a few hours before your execution.”

“If a stray spark happened to fall upon their explosives…I hardly think I can be implicated in that,” he says with an infuriating Teutonic smirk.

“No, I don’t think you could be, Captain.” He thinks he sees the private crack a smile from the corner of his eye, and wiping the amusement from his own face he gets back down to business.

“You know I can’t remove Bohn as camp spokesman. You prisoners have the right to elect any one of your men, even if he is a…” he refrains from saying the word he’d like to use, “hardliner. There’s not much I can do, by the books. Upstairs doesn’t give a shit about prison politics. Scratch that last part from the record, Private!” he barks over his shoulder.

“I understand, sir,” the German says. The commander believes that, and he thinks this officer wouldn’t take his help anyway. He cracks his knuckle again, sighs, flips through a few pages of the report, and finally says, “Preliminary hearing is concluded. Captain Dietrich is not recommended for disciplinary action. Colonel J. M. Putnam, etcetera. Private, you’re dismissed.” He watches until the teletypist takes his transcript and leaves.

“Captain, I’ll be straight with you. I never wanted this command. Running a shit-hole POW camp while our—my—boys are on the front lines dying is not how I planned to spend this war. But here we are and I’ve got a job to do and I’m gonna do it, damn it. The American people want these places clean and tidy and organized so they don’t have to spend too much time thinking about a bunch of no-good Krauts eating their food and living on their dollars while their sons are getting shot up overseas. If it’s a bunch of Nazis keeping those camps oiled, most of ’em don’t give a damn. Hell, they can’t tell the difference between a Nazi and an anti-Nazi and a goddamned Communist. My personal feeling on the matter might differ, but that’s not what gets things moving out here. I need a camp with quiet and discipline. You, Captain, you’re a troublemaker. Don’t argue. You can’t keep out of things when you see them going wrong and I respect you for that. I know you’ve got something planned here and you’re working on it and I wish you the best of God’s own luck. But I want you to keep whatever it is you’re doing in-house and on the QT, or I don’t care if you salute with a Heil Hitler or not, I’ll ship you out to Mississippi if I see you in my office again. And do not burn down any more buildings, Captain. That makes me very unhappy.”

Dietrich looks across the desk with a steely glint, a barely perceptible twitch of his mouth, and says, “Yes, sir.” Damned if the commander doesn’t at that moment respect the hell out of the sonuvabitch Kraut.

“Okay, now get outta my sight,” the commander says, not unfriendly. “By the way, what happened to your lip?” Dietrich pauses halfway to the door. The slit on his lower lip has mostly clotted by now, although his chin is smeared faintly red.

“That was my own fault, sir. I ran into a doorjamb.”

“On the way here?”

“That’s correct.” No, he’s not giving anything up.

The commander shakes his head slowly. These damned Krauts. Dietrich begins to leave again, until the commander speaks. “Captain, I’m glad you’re not fighting for the Nazis anymore.”

The German stops, turns to look at him. Something dark is in his eyes. “I never fought for the Nazis, Colonel. I fought for my country.” He salutes precisely and walks out.


	6. Chapter 6

PART  2 : Finest Sons

His mother taught him handwriting. She sat with him at the kitchen table every night when he was six and had him practice the precise loops and squiggles. That was a long time ago, but he remembers it clearly. 

He sets the pen to the page again, trying not to tear the gray sheet of paper perched on his knee.  _ I regret to inform you… My deepest condolences… Your son will be remembered… He died  with honor… _ The stock phrases come so naturally, he hardly has to think. But he keeps thinking about them, about every one of his men he saw shot down, knifed down, run down.

“I don’t understand it, Dietrich. You are a damned fool,”  Korvettenkapitän Metz says. He is  sprawled on the deck, head resting on his bundled up blue coat. He looks at Dietrich with mild contempt .

Dietrich finishes addressing the letter. He places it in his pocket, alongside a growing stack of others. When they get to shore, he will have to find some way of mailing them.

“Go back to sleep, Metz,” he says. He takes out another sheet of gray paper.

“No luck with those planes overhead,” Me tz sighs, now scanning the sky . There have been no bombers for the last hour, but they are on the watch for the familiar black and white crosses, coming to kill an Allied ship. That it is full of Germans is not enough to save them. “We’re all buggered,” Metz says quietly, maybe to himself.  “No point in those letters now.”

_ Werner Maas was a dutiful soldier, a  brave — _

“Want to know something funny? I had a crew out here, six or eight months ago, rigging this coast with mines. I wonder if they got them all,” Metz says. 

Dietrich ignores him, but after a moment he speaks, without looking up from the page.  “If you  were to  die on the voyage over, wouldn’t you want someone to write a letter to your parents?” 

“ Nobody would write a letter for me ,” he says.  He looks at Dietrich again. “I stopped writing those letters for my men a long time ago.”

“This is my last one,”  Dietrich says.  _ It was a privilege to lead  and serve with  Schütze  Maas .  Our country has truly lost one of her finest sons . _

 


	7. Chapter 7

PART 3: The Georgian

Muench scoops out a handful of dirt and settles it into a little mound. The soil here is reddish clay, often sandy in places, packed hard and terrible for cultivation. Back home, the soil was black and old, hoed through dozens of times throughout the centuries, or at least in Dietrich’s mother’s backyard garden. He tries to remember the color of the dirt in the countryside where his family had holidayed in his youth, but he cannot recall. Compared to his homeland this patch of America has not been settled very long and it’s younger, wilder, free of footprints somehow. He amuses himself for a moment with the thought that perhaps no man has ever before torn up this bit of dirt under Muench’s hands. 

Muench carefully places the seedling in the depression. His hands are thick and square, grimy with red dirt around the fingernails. Dietrich finds watching this process soothing. Muench loses himself so completely in his wretched little garden in front of their barracks that you could almost forget this man kneeling on the ground in filthy dungarees is a colonel. 

Dietrich breaks away and moves to the chain link fence once again. He finds himself here more than he likes to admit. He has kept the restless feeling at bay for almost three   
weeks, but he knows it is creeping up on him faster than he can manage for much longer. He doesn’t like fences, but he will have to get used to them.

The inside fence here is not electric, but he still resists the urge to place his hands on the wire. It would make him feel too like a captive. Not that it is really bad here. Better than he expected, actually. The food is no worse than his military rations of the past four years, and sometimes even better. The barracks is shared between himself and two other officers, although there are rumors of more prisoners coming soon. He shuts away that thought. News from the front leaves a sour taste in his mouth lately.

They keep the officers separated from the enlisted men. The oberst and the leutnant he bunks with are not bad company, but he has made no attempt to be friendly with them. A poor decision, perhaps, because the silence inside his head is becoming uncomfortable. He realizes he is lonely, and it’s not a feeling he is prone to experiencing. Internment may yet teach him a few things about himself. 

One wall of their yard is adjacent to the enlisted men’s recreation area, a half-hectare of land, bare-scraped dirt huddled between prefabricated steel barracks. He crosses to this demarcation and watches the men milling about there. They are a sea of gray-blue POW uniforms, a few greenish patches here and there of soldiers still in their own clothing, too proud to wear anything else. Hands clasped behind his back, Dietrich searches for faces he recognizes, but no one is familiar. What does he want here? Men to lead? He never gained much companionship from that. Someone to look out for, maybe, something to get the stillness out of his head. 

Fifty yards away a ruckus starts up between a dense group of twenty men. Several of them start shouting, and he sees tussling shaking through the crowd, voices heating as a minor brawl breaks out. Two or three men seem to be the object of the crowd’s attention, and even from here he can see they’re getting a thrashing. More men join in, tossing the three unlucky ones about until they hit the ground and struggle to get up, outmatched but fighting. Dietrich shoots a glance at the lone guard, standing off in a corner with his rifle resting on his shoulder. He’s watching the fight, but he doesn’t seem to think it warrants intervention. 

It’s hot and Dietrich feels his blood rising. “Guard!” he shouts the same way he would to his own troops. “Break those men up!” He still gets their attention when he speaks English. The guard looks annoyed, like a prisoner’s got no right to talk like that, spits in the dirt and pulls out a whistle. He blows three quick bursts. A couple guards emerge, cradling their guns and deciding if they need to fire to get some attention, but the soldiers are settling down, a few cool-headed members pulling away the instigators, the group disbanding, while a few more from the other side pick up the ones who got the beating. They pull apart, each side hurling a few jeers for good measure. The guard gives Dietrich a smirk as if to say, “Happy?”.

Dietrich ignores him and watches the beaten group. There are only six or so, and he   
notices now they don’t look like the rest of the troops, shorter and darker. Still, he tries German. “Soldat! Come over here.”

They hesitate, staring at the officer leaning against the fence with his hands stuck through the links. They appear to consult with one another before one breaks away and walks over. Up close, Dietrich can see he couldn’t be German, or Austrian either. “Do you speak German?” he asks, a little rough but not cruel.

“Nein.” His accent is unfamiliar. He watches with narrowed eyes.

“You are Russian? Russki?” 

“Nyet. Georgian.” 

Dietrich nods. His Russian is terrible and he struggles to find the words. “The men don’t like Russians. They think you are Russian.” He can’t tell if it made sense to the man. “How are you Georgians here?” He doesn’t know how to say it correctly and hopes it got through. Slowly, the man nods and launches into a complicated string of heavily-accented Russian.

“Me and my men refuse to be called up with Soviets.” He gestures back to the men standing in the shade of one of the barracks. “When the Deutsch swine come through they are forcing us to fight for them, but we never listen to orders and when the Allies came through we surrender. We hate Germans too, you are all—” he ends with a series of hostile sounding words Dietrich does not know but assumes are profane. Even though he has a nasty look on his face Dietrich does not feel he actually wishes him harm. 

“I am sorry about that.” The Georgian shrugs, as if there is no changing it. Or perhaps he couldn’t understand him. “I will speak to the men. Maybe they will leave you alone.”

“No good. Russians hate Germans, Germans hate Georgians, we hate everybody. Is killing us here or in Russia, no big difference.” Or that is the gist of what Dietrich understands, anyway. He hears something behind him and turns to see Muench has noticed their conversation. He lurks a few yards away with a deep scowl across with face, dirty hands bunched up into fists. The Georgian notices too and mutters something under his breath before abruptly trudging away, with a slight limp to remember his fight. 

“Bolshevik bastard. What did he just say?” Muench asks.

“Something involving your mother and a whore.” He remembers the oberst talking about service in Russia. He doesn’t care to ask for details. “How long have you been here, Oberst?”

Muench is still glaring at the huddle of Georgians. “Four months.”

“How possible is it to gain access to the men? Get to talk with them, see what’s going on in the main camp?”

He gives a guttural scoff. “Why, are you planning to make friends with the Russians? Don’t waste your time on them, Hauptmann, they are an incorrigible breed.”

Dietrich places his fingers around the thin wire and squeezes until he feels the hot steel digging into his skin. “We are rather more trapped here than the ordinary soldiers, don’t you think?” He half expects Muench to insist they will be liberated soon, that their country will have won the war before very long, but instead they are both silent. The men in the recreation grounds are moving out of the hot sun and into whatever shade they can find, everything going still in the heat of afternoon. “What are you planting over there, Muench?” he says eventually.

“Zucchini.” Dietrich raises an eyebrow, for some reason feeling a corner of his mouth twitching. “What? They say it grows well out here.” Dietrich’s restless feeling has not diminished, but the sting of loneliness is fading, and he lets go of the chain link fence.


End file.
